GOVERNANCE
FINANCIAL STATEMENTS
strategic report
PURPOSE-LED CULTURE OF INCLUSION AND BELONGING At the heart of our business is our purpose which is delivered through diverse, talented colleagues from different backgrounds and experiences. Not only is having a diverse workforce the right thing to do, it helps us to succeed, innovate and better serve our customers now and in the future. Our diversity, equity and inclusion (“DE&I”) strategy continues to drive forward on all aspects of diversity and inclusion, with a current focus on five key areas – gender, ethnicity, disability and neurodiversity, social mobility and sexual orientation. Our progress against our DE&I strategy and targets is underpinned by a range of initiatives which included: • A series of open sessions called Just Perspectives hosted by our executives. Attended by colleagues from across the business and supported by our employee networks and DE&I champions, these sessions covered a wide range of topics, including race, disability, neurodiversity, LGBTQ+ and social mobility. These forums provided an excellent way to engage colleagues across Just on our DE&I agenda to build momentum to support progress. • For the fourth year in a row we co-hosted a session as part of DiveIn, the festival for diversity and inclusion in the insurance industry. Around 450 people attended the session which was focused on the topic of menopause. • 40 colleagues have taken part in the actuarial mentoring programme, either as a mentor or a mentee, with ten mentees/mentors every year since 2019. This programme is primarily designed to support the development and retention of women within the actuarial profession. A further 60 colleagues have taken part in the 30% club cross company mentoring programme over the last few years, connecting female talent with experienced mentors from outside of our company. • We ran the second cohort of our executive sponsorship programme, with 11 female colleagues matched with an executive sponsor at Just to provide mentorship, advice and support for their development. Feedback from this programme was excellent. “The programme has really helped me to extend my networks and be able to speak to senior people who I have never worked closely with before.” Participant in the executive sponsorship programme We completed a reciprocal mentoring programme with five colleagues from Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic background mentoring with different members of our executive team. This helped to raise the awareness and understanding of our most senior leaders around race and ethnicity issues at work as part of our commitment to the Race at Work Charter. Again, feedback from both mentors and mentees was excellent. “I found our conversations really quite profound and quite moving – it’s made me reflect a lot about connecting and thinking about their individual circumstances rather than just thinking that’s a colleague. Very powerful.” Participant in the reciprocal mentoring programme • We participated in the 10,000 Black Interns programme, aimed at creating opportunities for young Black talent with paid internships. One of our interns posted on LinkedIn: “It has been a remarkable experience at Just. I have learnt a lot and I value all the connections made.” We will be continuing our participation in the summer of 2023 and have signed up to the newly launched 10,000 Able Interns initiative, designed to give individuals with a disability a flying start to their careers. • We are also now members of Progress Together, a membership body focused on improving socioeconomic diversity and inclusion at senior levels within financial services. We took the important step this year of collecting data from colleagues on their socioeconomic background to inform our strategy and plan in this area. • We are new members of GAIN, the Group for Autism, Insurance, Investment and Neurodiversity, reflecting our commitment to championing neurodiversity within our business and industry more broadly.
GENDER DIVERSITY We have increased gender diversity at senior levels from 27% to 30% in 2022 and are on track to deliver against our "33 by 23" pledge as a signatory to the Women in Finance Charter that 33% of our senior leaders will be female by 2023. The percentage of women on our Board is now 44%. Our gender pay gap reduced between 2021 and 2022 from 34.4% to 31.0%. These figures reflect an increasing proportion of women at senior levels in Just. RACE DIVERSITY As a signatory to the Race at Work Charter, Giles Offen, Group Chief Digital Information Officer, is our executive sponsor for Race. Under his sponsorship, we have publicly committed to increasing the percentage of senior leaders from a Black, Asian or Minority Ethnic background to 15% by 2024, in line with the percentage in the broader UK population. We are already at almost 18%. We have also voluntarily published our ethnicity pay gap report alongside our gender pay gap report. DISABILITY As a Disabilities Confident employer we are committed to taking action to improve how we recruit, retain and develop disabled people. We also offer mentoring and sponsorship opportunities to colleagues with disabilities and have produced guidance and support for people managers on supporting colleagues with disabilities. In addition to our membership of GAIN and commitment to take part in the 10,000 Able interns programme in 2023, we have also held a series of events for all colleagues this year focused on different aspects of disabilities, including sessions on deafness, autism and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder ("ADHD"). CLEAR AND REGULAR COMMUNICATION Underpinning our approach has been our continued recognition of the value of clear and regular communication at all levels within our organisation. We understand that this helps colleagues to join the dots between our purpose, strategic priorities and their day to day roles. We have continued to hold quarterly CEO-led town halls which are very successful and give colleagues not only the opportunity to hear a business update but ask the leadership team any questions they may have. “The David Richardson Town Halls are brilliant, he comes across really well alongside the other executive team.” Colleague comment from Peakon annual engagement survey Following on from the success of our Conversations with the Board sessions which we introduced in 2019, we have continued to give Board members and colleagues the opportunity to connect, ask questions, and learn from one another. Topics have ranged from what colleagues value at Just and what they would like to improve, through to the role of the Board in guiding our organisation. We’ve also covered our approach to reward, specifically in relation to how executive remuneration aligns with that of our colleagues across the Group. You can read more about the approach of the Board engaging with colleagues in the Section 172 statement. GOOD LEVELS OF ENGAGEMENT In September we introduced Peakon, a new tool to help us further understand and support the engagement of colleagues. It has given us rich data on what colleagues value about working at Just, and areas in which they think we could make improvements. We received an 85% response rate to this first survey, which in itself highlights that colleagues want to share their views as they know we take action based on their feedback. We also received over 12,000 comments on a whole range of topics, again, reiterating that colleagues value the two-way listening culture we have in place. “Just is a great company to work for, from support and development opportunities as an employee but also for what we stand for as a company and what we achieve for our customers. Proud to work for Just!” Colleague comment from the Peakon annual engagement survey
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